Wireless data communications standards sometimes incorporate feedback channels from a mobile device to a base station. As an example, the IEEE 802.16 standards, i.e., the “WiMax” standards, specify four uplink (from the mobile devices to the base station) feedback channels. These four uplink feedback channels are (1) ACK, (2) Fast Feedback, (3) Enhanced Fast Feedback and (4) Primary and Secondary Fast Feedback channels. These feedback channels are used to facilitate the base station's processing to schedule a variety of physical layer functions and perform various radio resource management processing, such as Hybrid Automatic Repeat Requests (HARQ), downlink measurements, Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO) and Modulation Code Scheme (MCS) selection. These feedback channel messages are communicated with forward error correction coding, but do not include an error checking capability to determine if the message has been correctly detected.
In order to provide more effective radio resource management, it is desirable to not use unreliable decoded feedback messages within the scheduler. The lack of an error checking capability for these feedback channel messages limits the ability to determine and thereby exclude from scheduling processing any unreliable decoded feedback channel messages. Simulation results indicate that using a simple soft decision metric for the detected message yields varying results based upon the different air interface channels available for WiMax feedback channel communications.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.